It is increasingly obvious that all the institutions of the state, from the smallest special district’s organizations to those at the state and federal level (and increasingly at the international level), are nothing but institutions of slavery: organized gangsterdoms that exercise control over people to some degree similar to that of traditional slavery in America before 1865 and in societies throughout ancient history. Stories this week demonstrate this.

No liberty in state-run higher education: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports that Ohio’s Youngstown State University leads censorship of “Straight Pride” posters in a bizarre example of trampling on people’s liberties in the name of “diversity.” “Last month, flyers advertising ‘Straight Pride Week’ were posted at Youngstown State University (YSU) in Ohio, asking students to celebrate thusly: ‘Just … go about your day without telling everyone about how ‘different’ you are.’ Reporting at the time indicated that the Student Government Association got in touch with administrators in order to receive permission to take the posters down, but email correspondence recently obtained through a public records request suggests that the YSU administration initiated the censorship itself.”

This is no surprise, and a commentary by James Leroy Wilson, “Dislike of the First Amendment isn’t new” in Independent Country explains why: “A recent poll indicates more Americans support than oppose laws against ‘hate speech,’ defined as ‘public statements which would stir up hatred against particular groups of people.’ But it’s not a majority; 41% are in favor and 37% opposed. That leaves 22% undecided. It seems unlikely, however, that hate speech laws will be imposed anytime soon. If the courts protect the least sympathetic hate group of the 21st century, the rest of the haters are probably safe.

That said, the poll does raise concerns that so many dislike or are ignorant of their human right of freedom of speech as protected under the First Amendment. But it’s not new.” No, hatred of liberty – especially everyone else’s liberty – is not new in America or in the world. It is a factor we must keep in mind as we seek to defend and restore our own liberty. MOST “institutions of higher education” are opposed to ANY liberty that is not that of their senior leadership: not that of students or even that of faculty and ESPECIALLY not that of either the institution’s staff nor the public. It is an attitude they share with that OTHER significant set of institutions of the state: prisons and jails.

Speaking of prisons, as Nathan Goodman discusses in “Slavery’s incomplete end at Students For Liberty, “The standard narrative regarding slavery in the United States suggests that slavery was legal until a bloody civil war was fought over it, after which the 13th Amendment was passed, which prohibited slavery. But this leaves out one crucial caveat. The 13th Amendment prohibited slavery ‘except as punishment for a crime.’ This allowed slavery to continue under the cover of law.”

However, Goodman concentrates unduly on “racial” prison slavery and fails to discuss the fact that prison slavery – dating back to pre-War Between the States territorial prisons in Arizona and other jurisdictions, used prison slave labor continuously regardless of color of the inmates. And this continues today in most of the Fifty States: whether it is making license plates (themselves a badge of a kind of slavery) or building “governor’s houses” for the poor or making saddles and other tack in prison workshops for pennies an hour, or the huge federal corporation “Unicor” which produces thousands of products for government bureaucrats. Supposedly these acts of slavery teach skills that help the released convict make it in the “real world,” but it is bogus: the training that convicts get in prisons and jails today is better ways of carrying out their criminal activities. Once more, we see government and its institutions failing to do what they claim to be doing.

What these institutions do (like the primary and secondary government-run, tax-funded schools and the state-run higher education institutions) is give MORE control of their inmates (“Students”) to the government: not just while they are IN the institutions but when they leave as well: debt peonage for the graduates of higher education, poorly-educated but well-indoctrinated diploma-waving graduates of GRTF schools, convicts on near-permanent parole… all are under the thumb of the state to an incredible degree and very much like the slaves of early America: slaves not just in the Antebellum South but even in Yankeedom (New York did not abolish all slavery until 1827, Connecticut 1848, New Jersey 1804, and Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri until 1865: AFTER the end of the War). And when I say “all slavery,” I mean non-prison slavery.

The institutions of the state are the institutions of slavery: from conscription (the military draft), to prisons, to taxation (which is either a form of slavery or theft: take your pick and decide based on how MUCH is taken), to the various regulations and rules and statutes and ordinances which dictate so much of our daily lives.

I have to add Quote of the Week #2 here: “From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor’s rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own.” Who said that? None other than the communist Carl Schurz (1829-1906) a German-born, US General, US Senator (from Missouri), who founded the “Liberal Republican” movement after escaping from Europe following the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, and was (among other infamous acts) the organizer of what is now the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). He created the modern reservation system, yet another example of government institutions that enslave.